they only have about 4-6 weeks left before the nation hits the national debt ceiling. republicans are calling for budge cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling, but president obama came out swinging during his news conference on monday claiming he's already gone a long way toward closing the budget gap. joining us now to fact check some of his statements, stephen hayes, a senior writer for the weekly standard and a fox news contributor, douglas holtz-eakin is now president of the american action forum. just as a general rule, steven, when you heard the president speaking in that news conference, was he generally being honest with the american people about the state of our finances? >> well, i would say there were some things he said that were true, some things that he said that were, i think, misleading. importantly, he didn't put into proper context the discussion that we're having nationally about the debt ceiling and about the state of our finances more broadly. if you look at where we are, more than $16 trillion in debt, the president is right when he says that